Death comes to me again, a girl by Dorianne Laux
Death comes to me again, a girl
Dorianne LauxDeath comes to me again, a girl
in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.
It’s not so terrible she tells me,
not like you think, all darkness
and silence. There are windchimes
and the smell of lemons, some days
it rains, but more often the air is dry
and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase
built from hair and bone and listen
to the voices of the living. I like it,
she says, shaking the dust from her hair,
especially when they fight, and when they sing.
MARGINALIA
I can’t find this author in the library. Or maybe I just don’t know how to look. Or maybe I am looking in places I shouldn’t be. Story of my life.
ABOUT DORIANNE LAUX
Dorianne Laux is the author of several collections of poetry, including What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Smoke (2000); Facts about the Moon (2005), chosen by the poet Ai as winner of the Oregon Book Award and also a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Book of Men (2011), which was awarded the Paterson Prize; and Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected (2019). She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation… (more)
Read more poems by Dorianne Laux • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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Sean Foley
My favorite poet. Loved her since the first book.
<3
Liz
I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying
your blog, and the choices of poems, and the
poems themselves. Thank you.